The book ›Generative Gestaltung‹

2009

The book started with the diploma project Generative Systeme from Julia Laub and Benedikt Groß in 2007. A year later they asked me to team up because Verlag Hermann Schmidt was interested in publishing the book. And again one year later it got printed.

Generative Design is a method for creating (visual) output. The main concept hereby is that the output is not created manually but by a set of rules – the algorithm. This concept is not new. In fact, already in an early state of computer science the first artistic images were created using a programm.

But for a long time you had to be a quite skilled programmer to achieve good results. But with programming languages like Processing things got a lot easier. And even people who are afraid of programming were able to start with it.

A book for designers, not programmers

If you want to do stuff like this but you are mainly interested in the visual output and not the programming it's hard to find books. Most of the books in that field are books that teach you how to code using examples that are not very appealing to visual designers.

The book Generative Gestaltung works the other way round. It's mainly a huge collection of examples grouped in chapters that any designer understands: Color, Shape, Type and Image. We explain these examples, but also without understanding them fully, you can use the programms to produce interesting results. Have a look at the website to get an impression.